Roger-Mark de Souza, Vice President for Research, Population Action International

Where

Le Méridien President, Dakar, Senegal

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In preparation for next year's U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, the International Conference on Family Planning is holding a panel in which experts will discuss the disconnect between the family planning and enviornmental fields. In his “Intentional Childbearing and Population Growth” presentation for the panel, Worldwatch President Robert Engelman imagines a future in which all women have the right and means of exercising personal control over their pregnancies. He calls on the family planning community to demonstrate that population policy seeks to increase the percentage of births that result from intended pregnancies, and eliminate those that are unwanted. To earn public support for rights-based population policies, advocates of family planning need to communicate that empowering women to make their own reproductive choices will improve both their individual well-being and our collective environment.

Several population and environmental experts will join Engelman on the panel. Meaghan Parker and Sandeep Bathala will both represent the Environmental Change and Security Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS), an independent think tank in Washington D.C. Roger-Mark de Souza, Vice President for Research and Director of the Climate Program of Population Action International, will speak as well. Geoffrey Dabelko of WWICS will serve as the session chair.